The cleanliness of otherness: epidemics, informal urbanization and urban degeneration in early twentieth-century Madrid

Noel A. Manzano Gómez

Planning Perspectives, 2022, vol. 37, issue 1, 127-147

Abstract: In the first few decades of the twentieth century, makeshift shelters known as chozas grew in Madrid. Using historical monographs and the press as main sources, in this article we discuss the influence of medical thinking on the problematisation and eradication of this form of urban growth. During the nineteenth century, scientific racism identified poor housing areas as a source of disease and immorality, yet the public powers in Madrid tolerated and overlooked the development of these spaces until the early twentieth century. It was only when the fear of epidemics and warnings from the press became too great that the authorities began to implement various high-profile ‘sanitary campaigns’ to destroy the shacks. Although these initiatives did not solve the sanitation problems because the deprived populations frequently constructed new living areas, the continued efforts of the public authorities succeeded in displacing the shantytowns to the less regulated periphery. Whilst the spaces were transformed, the representations that signalled them as pathological spaces seems to have remained. Research on the historical eradication of urban ‘otherness’ allows us to discuss the legacy of the medical theories that supported it and the influence of this on current prejudices regarding disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02665433.2021.2017683 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:rppexx:v:37:y:2022:i:1:p:127-147

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/rppe20

DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2021.2017683

Access Statistics for this article

Planning Perspectives is currently edited by Michael Hebbert

More articles in Planning Perspectives from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().